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Re: "Churches arm, train congregants"
Any church needs to be prepared for an armed attack. Smaller churches can handle this through an informal security plan, usually the ushers. Probably the only difference is that in the past strong arms would have been enough to handle any disturbance and now at least some need to be armed with a firearm.
Larger churches need to be prepared with a formal security plan and team to execute a consistent and comprehensive watch to do the best to keep church goeers safe.
My church has a security team made up of qualified volunteers for each of our four weekend services. You can pick them out by the secret service type earpieces if you look closely. Our pastor doesn't go to the platform until the last praise and worship song and if you look closely you can see a security guy following him across the back of the congregation and up the side aisle at a discreet distance. That security guy then sits clsoe to the front the rest of service.
Our security team is trained to defuse situations rather than escalate them so they are very professional and calm. They don't provoke or act in any rude way. However they can respond with physical force if required.
I know we also have a uniformed and armed deputy at services some or all of the time. I don't know if he is a member, volunters, or is hired.
It is a sad testament that any of this is necessary but I think the Lord expects us to use common sense to protect churchgoers in this crazy age we live in. All of our security is very discrete so as not to draw attention away from church itself.
(I will now count to ten and wait for EB or some other fine christian poster make some smart alek remark about my post and remind me why I rarely post here anymore)
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"I think some people love spiritual bondage just the way some people love physical bondage. It makes them feel secure. In the end though it is not healthy for the one who is lost over it or the one who is lives under the oppression even if by their own choice"
Titus2woman on AFF
"We did not wear uniforms. The lady workers dressed in the current fashions of the day, ...silks...satins...jewels or whatever they happened to possess. They were very smartly turned out, so that they made an impressive appearance on the streets where a large part of our work was conducted in the early years.
"It was not until long after, when former Holiness preachers had become part of us, that strict plainness of dress began to be taught.
"Although Entire Sanctification was preached at the beginning of the Movement, it was from a Wesleyan viewpoint, and had in it very little of the later Holiness Movement characteristics. Nothing was ever said about apparel, for everyone was so taken up with the Lord that mode of dress seemingly never occurred to any of us."
Quote from Ethel Goss (widow of 1st UPC Gen Supt. Howard Goss) book "The Winds of God"
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